Breakdown

Language selection

The title of the interpreter features a drop-down menu that allows the user to select the language of his expressions. By default, Acceleo provides the interpreter for itself, but any third-party plugin can come and add its own language to the list. More on the extension in the Extensibility section.

Expression

The expression section allows users to enter and edit expressions for the selected language. It can be fully customized by language providers and can thus become as powerful as a full-fledged editor for that language. Completion proposals and syntax highlighting are available by default for the Acceleo interpreter.

The expression will be interpreted on the fly as it is typed if the Real-time toggle is activated (located at the upper-right of the view, "6" in the above breakdown). Otherwise, users can call for the evaluation through :

Right-click in the expression view, then hit evaluate

Hit the Evaluate icon of the expression section

Use the CTRL + SHIFT + D keyboard shortcut

Result

This section displays the result of evaluations in the form of a tree. There are multiple possibilities as to the result look-and-feel :

Collection result : each of the collection's values will be displayed as one row of the result tree.

Single object : if the result consists of a single, plain object, it will be displayed as the only row of the tree.

Each row of the tree can be displayed in a number of ways, depending on the object's type. The objects are usually displayed as they would in their own editors, but two types of generated objects are displayed in a special manner :

String

If the result is a string, its very first line will be displayed as the Tree's row.

If the string is longer than a single line, its full length can be seen in two ways :

Hover : Hovering the mouse over the row

Popup : Double-clicking the row

File

The interpreter allows you to generate "files". No file will actually be generated on disk; instead the interpreter will display them in their own special way, with the icon corresponding to their type (as known to Eclipse) and their content as a child row :

A double-click on the "file" row will open a read-only editor for the file, along with all of the syntax highlighting this editor may have. (partial exemple of a "java" file opened through this action below)

Variables

The variable section of the interpreter view is hidden by default, and can be shown or hidden at will through the icon of the view.

The variables will be displayed as a Tree, with variable names as the root, and their value(s) as children.